Sanctuary for the Abused

Sunday, October 14, 2018

REVICTIMIZATION

I am a survivor of sexual and other abuse in my childhood, as well as
domestic violence and partner rape. As I began to heal, it occurred to
me that many of the things I had felt in the abusive relationship were
things I had felt much earlier as an abused child.

While it is important not to subscribe to stereotypes that a certain
"type" of person is repeatedly raped or experiences domestic violence,
it is known that the risk of revictimization by sexual assault is
approximately doubled for survivors of child sexual abuse (1). For
example, in Diana Russell's study of women who had experienced
incestuous abuse as children, two thirds were subsequently raped (2).

This article discusses revictimization drawing on literature together
with my understanding of how it worked for me. It should not be seen
as a generalization that only child abuse survivors experience repeated
rape or domestic violence - or that survivors of child sexual abuse
are sitting ducks for further abuse. Sometimes, even people from
stable, loving families are subject to the dynamics of later domestic
violence. And it cannot be stated strongly enough that any person can
be subject to sexual assault. Nevertheless, child sexual and other
abuse can leave us with vulnerabilities that abusers may be quick to
exploit. It's important that we see repeated victimization not as a
reason to hate ourselves, but as stemming from wounds incurred through
no fault of our own and for which we deserve our own compassion.

Read through, and if this fits for you, please know that there is help available.

CHILD SEXUAL / OTHER ABUSE AND REVICTIMIZATION

Were you sexually, physically or emotionally abused as a child? Did
you experience more of the same when you got older? Have you been in a
relationship where you were beaten, raped or otherwise abused? If the
answer is yes, you may feel, as many survivors of repeated abuse do,
that you have a “sign on your back”, that you “attract” abusers or even
that you were born to be the recipient of other people’s abuse. One of
the saddest legacies of repeated abuse is that survivors often feel
that if it’s happened so often, they must somehow deserve it.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that agrees. Judith Herman writes:

The phenomenon of repeated victimization, indisputably real, calls
for great care in interpretation. For too long, psychiatric opinion has
simply reflected the crude social judgment that survivors “ask for
abuse." The earlier concepts of masochism and the more recent
formulations of addiction to trauma imply that victims seek and derive
gratification for repeated abuse. This is rarely true (3)

So, why does revictimization happen? Before we go on to look at just
some of the reasons, a reminder: This is not an exercise in how to
blame ourselves more. Even if there`are factors that make some of
vulnerable to further abuse, perpetrators alone are responsible for the abuse they commit.WHY REVICTIMIZATION HAPPENS - SOME OF THE REASONS

Personalities forged in an environment of early abuse:
Children who are abused by people they are close to learn to equate
love with violence and sexual exploitation. They have not learned to
create safe and appropriate boundaries with people, and they grow up
unable to see themselves as having any right to choice. Their
self-image is so damaged that they may see nothing wrong with even
extremely abusive treatment of them by others. It is seen as
unavoidable and the ultimate cost of love. Some women sexually abused
as children may believe that their sexuality is all they have of any
worth. (4).

Compulsion to repeat trauma:
Bessel van der Kolk writes, "Many traumatized people expose
themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the
original trauma. These behavioral reenactments are rarely consciously
understood to be related to earlier life experiences (5)". Survivors of
earlier rape and abuse may put themselves at risk of further harm, not
because they want to be abused or hurt, but because they may be
seeking a different, better`outcome, or to have more control. It may
also be because they believe they deserve the pain inflicted on them.
Often, reenactment has a compulsive and involuntary feel. Survivors may
feel completely numb, and unaware of how reenactment is taking place
(6). Conversely, it may call forth the same terror and shame as
experienced in childhood. van der Kolk further explains,

People who are exposed early to violence or neglect come to expect it
as a way of life. They see the chronic helplessness of their mothers
and fathers' alternating outbursts of affection and violence; they
learn that they themselves have no control. As adults they hope to undo
the past by love, competency, and exemplary behavior. When they fail
they are likely to make sense out of this situation by blaming
themselves. When they have little experience with nonviolent resolution
of differences, partners in relationships alternate between an
expectation of perfect behavior leading to perfect harmony and a state
of helplessness, in which all verbal communication seems futile. A
return to earlier coping mechanisms, such as self-blame, numbing (by
means of emotional withdrawal or drugs or alcohol), and physical
violence sets the stage for a repetition of the childhood trauma and
"return of the repressed (7)

The effect of trauma:
It is true that some people may have a series of violent partners, or
encounters with rapists. I had a friend who was subjected to rape three
times in two years . A family member - echoing typical victim-blame -
sneeringly asked me "why she kept leaving herself open to it. -
wouldn't you think that if she went through it once, she should have
known how to steer clear of creeps?" This reflects a lack of knowledge
about the workings of trauma: While some survivors may be overly
cautious about everybody, other traumatized people actually have a
harder time forming accurate assessments of danger (8). The above
question also absolves the perpetrator who falsely seeks to engage the
trust of a trauma survivor in order to abuse them.

Traumatic Bonding:
Judith Herman writes about the tendency of abused children to cling
tenaciously to the very parents who hurt them (9) Perpetrators of
sexual abuse may capitalize on this tendency by giving their victim the
only sense of specialness, or being loved, that they have ever had.
Bessel van der Kolk tells us that people subjected to trauma and
neglect are vulnerable to developing the tendency to traumatically bond
with those who harm them. Traumatic bonding is often behind the excuses
of battered women for the violence of their partners, and for the
repeated returning to a batterer (10).REVICTIMIZATION AND ME

Unfortunately my adult experiences of rape and battering were not new
to me. Being battered by both my parents since infancy and sexually
abused throughout childhood and early teens (by non-related
perpetrators), and receiving little in the way of protection or belief
taught me some powerful lessons, which I brought to an abusive partner.
I remember exactly what I felt the first time he hit me. He cracked me
across the face, and as I cradled my rapidly swelling cheekbone, I was
certainly upset. But there was another, deeper feeling of validation;
something went "click" inside me. It was a sense of correctness about
what he had done, an utter familiarity which confirmed a bone-badness I
had always felt. The first time he raped me, there was a similar - and
terribly powerful - sense of meeting with something I seemed destined
for. It works differently for different people, but let me share with
you some of the specific lessons of childhood that I believe made me
fair game for a battering and raping partner - you may identify:

The belief that I was dirty and utterly corrupt:
From a very early age, the sexual abuse I experienced combined with
the words and actions of my parents left me with a sense that I had
been born inherently dirty. Judith Herman writes that children who
experience abuse and abandonment conclude - need to conclude - that
their inner badness is responsible for the abuse, in order to sustain
attachments to those who hurt them (11). By the time I was 18 and met
my abusive partner, that sense of me - but not an abuser - being bad
had been intact for a long time

The belief that I was not worth standing up for:
Abandoned to my fate as a child, there were times in the violent
relationship where I honestly felt embarrassed and foolish for
complaining about the violence; it was, after all, only me it was being
done to. As a 4 year old child, I had disclosed sexual abuse to my
mother, who had said she didn't want to hear about it. I concluded -
and I remember thinking it - that if something bad happens to me, it
doesn't matter. In short, I didn't matter. This was to have a
devastating impact as I grew up.

The belief that It was my fault: Haven't many
people who were beaten and sexually abused as children heard things
like "you make me do this to you" or, "I wouldn't do this to you if you
weren't so bad"? Hence, this is what we learn, and what we believe
when people continue harming us.

The belief that love involves pain: Love and
bashing and rape were not incompatible to me. Even when I felt so hurt,
and was being degraded so badly, I still believed there might be some
love in it that I could get if only I was good enough. And this is what
I'd been told; that I would be loved if I was good enough - which I
somehow never seemed to be. By the time I was older, the computer file
in my head on love always came up with themes of abuse. I had been
sexually abused at 13 by a particularly nasty piece of work, a man
whose kids I babysat, who told me how much he loved me; how special and
beautiful I was to him. Anytime I objected to the abuse, he threatened
not to love me anymore: "Don't you want to be Uncle Bill's darlin'?
Don't you love your Uncle Bill?" I was so completely affection-starved -
I remember this as a time in my life when nobody gave me any
love - and that is no exaggeration. I did not want to be abused but I
did want to be loved. Like many abusers, he preyed on that.
I had only ever received love from poisonous sources; I
simply did not see any other options. How can you recite a beautiful
poem you've never learned? Perhaps all you know is the gutter version. I
fantasized about other more ideal forms of love, but I knew that for
someone as fundamentally bad as me, they were but wishful thinking. I
had been taught that I was beyond the pale of the tender, safe love I
desperately craved. I reasoned that if my own life-givers could not
love me, whom else could I expect to love me?

The belief that sex is supposed to degrade you:
For some time, I was orally raped on a daily basis at age 4, and a
close family friend started raping me when I was eight. This lasted
until I was ten, and was extremely painful and frightening. These
things were my first point of reference regarding sex , and for a long
time, it was to determine how I viewed all other encounters. I believed
that the sexual abuse in my childhood meant I was bad. Growing up did
not change that view. From the unhealed child in me the belief operated
that sex was actually supposed to involve hurt, degradation and no
choice for me. This influenced a large part of my response, or more
correctly non-response to my partner's brutality.

The belief that you must always forgive because an abuser matters more than you:
Many abused children unconditionally forgive the adults who hurt them -
it's part of traumatic bonding and part of the way they blame
themselves. This didn't change as I got older either: As a little girl,
I picked up my battered body and went to mummy who had done the
battering. I continued to offer daddy my love - even though he didn't
really seem to want it, and as he raised the bar ever higher as to
earning his love. If mummy cried and said she didn't mean to
hurt me, I flung my arms around her, cried with her and said it was
okay. I recall my mother saying often as I grew up, "Louise, you have
such a forgiving heart." That unconditional forgiving for the worst
treatment; the most outrageous betrayals, was also to be taken into my
relationship. He hurt me - I felt sorry for him - and forgave him.

The belief that I didn't deserve any better: I
honestly believed that I was a cheap slut who had failed to be good
enough to get better treatment. I was taught that men don't respect
"girls like me" and any bad treatment is thus justified.

Regression and being drawn into the same space as childhood:
I believe the sexual abuse in my childhood most severely affected my
autonomy. Can a child say no to an adult? Some may argue, "but an adult
can say no to an adult." Yes, but not where there is an established
power differential, especially one based on the fear of violence. And
not when you've learned again and again that "no" has no currency. As a
child I was used by whomever felt like it with no say in the matter.
Even if I was older in the relationship, a sense of choice still seemed
an abstract absurdity.

Traumatic bonding: Abusers traumatically bind
their victims to them by alternating threat with intermittent kindness
(12). After my partner had hurt me, he sometimes offered me comfort -
really warm, loving comfort, which would make everything okay again for
awhile - just as it had in childhood. As the young woman being harmed,
I felt very little girl-ish, and sometimes I just wanted a cuddle. It
felt like only he was there for me, even if he hurt me too. As in my
childhood, it did not matter that violator was also comforter, it was
still better than nothing. I just needed that contact. His duality of
roles as both violator and comforter was to cement my sense of
entrapment further.

Inaccurate assessments of danger: Abuse
survivors are not to be blamed, of course, for not being able to
second-guess that a batterer will be a batterer. But for me, there was a
tendency to follow anybody who "acted nice", believing that they would
be nice - and this even when niceness alternated with cruelty.

As a woman who
lived in a violent relationship; returned to it again and again, loved
the abuser and truly cared about him, I have been patronized, had
insulting inferences drawn about my intelligence, been branded as
"sick", and "masochistic" - that last by a psychiatrist whom I told
about the relationship. Many of us will recognize these labels. People
who blame you don't understand that layer piled upon layer of trauma
may tend to produce a crippling of ability to care for oneself in the
ways non-traumatized people would see as commonsense.. Child abuse
really is like a cancer; left untreated that malignancy can metastasize
into further and possible fatal dangers - indeed, I am lucky to be
alive.

But does this need to be the case? Let's look at the next section.

SOLUTIONS AND HEALING
Socially, picking up on children who have been hurt and offering early
intervention so that they carry far less damage into adulthood with
them would be a great big plus. Not kicking abuse survivors in abusive
relationships or who are repeatedly hurt by rape when they're down by
branding them "stupid" and abandoning them - thus proving to them again
that they're worthless - will also go a long way.

I think that what worked for me was that I at least had a concept of
safe, nurturing love - even if I didn't feel I deserved it. Some people
don't even have that concept, and I believe I am lucky that I did
because it gave me a starting point. My fellow survivor, If you have
identified with any of the above, I implore you to seek counselling to
overturn those old scars and recognize that you too, have the same
place in the scheme of fairness and love as anybody else. All that I
learned, and all the ways in which it was reinforced have not, after
all, stopped me from growing into a woman who knows that I don't
deserve to be the recipient of other people's abuse. It was not my
fault; I was not bad, and I can tell somebody with a mind to hurt me to
go to hell - I owe them nothing; least of all my soul.

Does such a change in attitude rape-proof us? No, as long as there are
perpetrators, we are all vulnerable regardless of what we think about
ourselves. To say that somebody is raped because of their self-image is
victim-blame - again - it's the perpetrator who takes advantage. But I
do believe that the reduction in self-hatred and boundaries that come
with healing make us less inclined to accommodate people who are
disrespectful and even dangerous. Knowing I deserve to be safe - that I
do not deserve to be raped - means that I listen to my gut, put
distance between myself and abusive people and reduce my chances, at
least for now, of being harmed again. Our safety is sometimes contingent on how much we value it; healing means changing patterns of devaluing it.

I healed. You can do it too, even if the damage is extensive. You are
worth it. You are. You were not abused again and again because you
deserve it. You have been traumatized, you were set up and others
capitalized on it. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Please feel free
to discuss multiple victimization at the Pandora's Aquarium message board and chat room - we understand, and we value you even if many others didn't.

3 Comments:

Your amazing progress reminds me of that saying, "rather than curse the darkness, light one candle, which banishes darkness", or something along those lines. Your transformation from confused, damaged innocent to advanced human consciousness is flat out evidence of your extremely high level of intelligence. Those who hurt you are no more than agents of the demon and as has been said, "one who hurts a child would do best to tie a millstone around his neck and be dropped in the ocean...", ...to sink to the bottom and ...*never be missed*!! ---or something like that!

Thank you for your story which is a profoundly complete journey: a validation of the essential worth and goodness of all the hurt and betrayed young people by older maniacs since the dawn of time. It is surely work like yours that is like a signpost marking the ushering in of the new paradigm of mankind which validates the higher human levels of being: that we are, in fact, truly vessels of spiritual enlightenment and cosmic consciousness.

SANCTUARY FOR THE ABUSED: Articles, clickable links & resources for victims & survivors. Dealing with verbal, psychological & emotional abuse and personality disorders.
This is an informational blog NOT a chat site. If you have questions or need support, Facebook has numerous groups for Narcissism Victims, Narcissistic Family and Domestic Violence Survivors (both female and male)
Or call 1-800-799-7233

This is a FREE site. But, if anything here has been helpful to you or someone you know, please consider making even a small donation. Your support will go DIRECTLY to DV Reform efforts. Or you can donate DIRECTLY here Scroll down for more ways to help. ALL donations are reported to the I.R.S.

***************
***************

CONTACT & SITE INFORMATION

This site does NOT provide legal help, 'sanctuary',
shelter or law enforcement help. This site is
for INFORMATION ONLY.

IP BLOCKER: 617,342 users

GENDER BIAS
Numerous men have come in here and been offended that the abusers are referred to as "he" in many of these articles. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am well aware of the fact that female abusers exist and cause just as much devastation as their male counterparts. The sad fact is that there are more male abusers than female narcissists, but domestic homicide is the leading cause of death in women surpassing cancer and car accidents. A woman dies at the hands of her significant other every 6 days, and when you look at the stats for the whole world it is even more bleak. Worldwide, a woman dies every day due to domestic homicide. One in 3 women will experience abuse in her life. It is a plague on society worldwide, causing devastation and ruining lives of men and women. Abuse is an equal opportunity scourge, abusers don't care what color, nationality, religion, age, health condition or socio-economic status, or gender the victim is, the only prerequisite a victim must have is a heart and empathy.
Replacing he or him with she or her as you read is simple enough. Please remember these articles are NOT written by me but shared as supportive information. Thank you.

If you like this blog,then link back to me.
This is what you will see.

Optionally use this Widget installer to add this link to your blogger blog.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a â€˜fair useâ€™ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Â§107, the material in this message is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.